“That was different, though. A lot of things have changed since the first time we fucked,” I point out, bracing myself for the honesty I’m going to be laying down.
“What do you mean?” Jack asks, somehow managing to sound both hesitant and demanding. He’s become immediately wary, body stiffening as if he’s read the intent in my eyes and is preparing himself to bolt.
I can’t blame him for that. I’m changing up the game without a heads-up or a press conference or anything.
In the face of Jack’s sudden guardedness, I fall back on my instinct to soothe via physical contact. I put my hand back on his torso and rub it slowly up and down. Jack doesn’t relax entirely, but there’s an unmistakable release of tension in his face, and his body language becomes less tight.
Once I’m relatively certain Jack won’t disappear the moment I start digging into the hard stuff, I push on.
“Look, I get this isn’t the best time to be sorting our emotional crap out. But I also think it’s important to tell you how things are for me. How I, you know,feelabout you.”
Jack is quiet for a long time, and I allow it. This is going to be difficult for both of us, but maybe especially so for Jack. I’ve at least had experience with romantic entanglements before. Real ones, I mean. It would be unfair to expect Jack to be comfortable with this kind of crap. Expressing your feelings is painful enough for those of us who grew up in somewhat-normal households. Fuck knows how someone who was raised in Jack’s brand of hell is supposed to handle it.
“Go on, then,” Jack eventually prods, voice subdued, giving me nothing to work with or analyse, nothing to aid me in understanding how he’s taking this. “How do you …feelabout me?” He makes a face at the word but otherwise manages to retain some neutrality.
This is it, then, isn’t it? It’s now or never.
A voice in my head screamslet it be never, but I ignore it. Just.
“You’re my partner and my friend. And I care about you as both those things.” I swallow hard, my throat moving under Jack’s hand. He doesn’t loosen his grip to let me breathe any easier, which is oddly reassuring. Don’t ask me why, because I wouldn’t be able to tell you.
“But I think maybe—” I cut myself off, silently cursing my own inability tocommit. If I’m going to do this, then I need to do it, no half measures. It’ll just confuse things otherwise.
“No, fuck it, I know how I feel.” My hand on Jack’s torso fists his T-shirt, tugging on it lightly. “I’m falling for you, Jack. Really fucking hard. Like. Death-on-impact hard.”
Jack seems to enjoy the word choice, mouth twitching upwards on one side. It undercuts the hand grenade of fear that explodes all over his face a second later. He struggles to contain his reaction of out-and-out horror. His body has locked up again, closing him off from me on multiple fronts.
“What does that mean?” he challenges, cagey about it and squinting at me like I’m a complex puzzle he isn’t sure he even wants to try and figure out. “What do you want from me?”
Pain slices its way through my chest, leaving a cold hollowness and a wrecked pair of lungs shivering in its wake. Finding it hard to breath all of a sudden, it takes me a minute to answer, “Nothing you don’t want to give.” It comes out sounding weak to my ears, broken up in the middle by a catch in my voice, the hitch in my chest feeling like a punishment.
Jack scowls at my answer, clearly unsatisfied by it.
“No, Leo.” He sighs frustratedly. “I’m serious: what do you want from me?” At my continued confusion, he sighs out an angry puff of air. “I need you to explain it. I’ve got no experience with this shit. Not outside of fuckery for OI. But that doesn’t count to me. It was all about lying. But this thing with us…it’s honest, right?”
“Right,” I answer immediately, finally beginning to understand. That horrible tightness in my chest eases a little, and the coldness begins to ebb.
“I need you to tell me what youwant.” Jack presses, staring down at me intensely, waiting for a real answer he can do something with.
This is a barrier I expected to deal with. I just underestimated how out of his element Jack would feel.
He needs specifics, a real directive rather than vague notions, which I can give him.
“I want to be with you. Romantically. Boyfriends. Lovers. Amorous accomplices. Whatever title you want to use; I don’t care.”
Jack absorbs my declaration with more confidence than he did my last one, which is a relief although his verbal response is less heartening, “Are yousure?”
I bark out a laugh, unable to stifle it in the face of Jack’s genuine incredulity.
“Yeah.” I tighten my grip on his T-shirt. “I am. Definitely.”
Jack gets a very tortured expression on his face, conflicting emotions waging battle like gladiators in a coliseum. “I don’t know how to do any of this,” Jack tells me as if it’s damning evidence that will cause me to take back everything I just said.
“That’s okay,” I assure him, a stupidly big smile spreading across my face.
Jack glowers down at me, looking extremely unhappy with my attempt to soothe his fears. “How is that okay?” He presses down on my throat, not too hard but enough to reveal just how frustrated he’s becoming. “Are you insane? In what world does it make sense for you to want to be with me like that? Do you seriously not have any idea how incredible you are?” He glances off to the side, clearly anguished, hopelessness fused into every word. “You could have anyone, Leo.”
Alright, let’s get a grip and start laying down the rules of this new game we’re playing.
